The moment was indeed serious; yet, had not the King been so thoroughly averse to the Opposition, he would not have found them obdurate. Burke owned to me that his friends would be content without a dissolution, provided an Act of Parliament were passed to take from the House of Commons the power of incapacitation. The Duke of Richmond confessed the same to Mr. Conway. Lord Chatham was never inflexible towards prerogative; but the subservience of Lord North was more tempting; and on him the King fixed. Lord North owned to Conway that the King had pressed him to accept the Treasury, professed he did not desire it, but would undertake it rather than expose the country to confusion. Whether Lord North’s readiness to be his successor awakened the Duke of Grafton’s jealousy, on the 25th his Grace talked of going on if the Attorney-General De Grey would accept the Great Seal, as the Duke expected he would. He told Conway that he was extremely pressed to fill up the vacancies; that Lord Sandwich teazed him to be made Privy Seal, or Master of the Ordnance, since Mr. Conway would not take it. Conway, who had offered to give it up, to make Amherst easy, said, the King had consented he should remain Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance; and that, in any case, he would not act under a man of so bad a character as Sandwich, nor would see anybody else put over his head. He was glad, he said, to hear his Grace talk of continuing; for himself, he would take no part, unless his Grace remained. He had no objection to Lord North, but had never had any connexion with him; for the Bedfords, he knew they were his enemies. The Duke made no reply; and Conway and I concluded the wayward fit was gone, as, to our knowledge, it had done so often before.